Natasha Fondren

I’m not a big fan of stories that put me in a bad mood. Call me a genre snob or a happy-ending snob, if you like, but seriously: real life offers me plenty of realism and unhappy endings. Does fiction think it’s going to teach me anything new in this department?

Okay, it’s true. There have been a few unhappy endings that I liked. Little Bee, by Chris Cleave, is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Loved it. And Swoon, by Nina Mulkin.

But let’s talk best-picture-hopeful Crazy Heart.

It’s true that the setup was less realism and more fiction: a beautiful young lady wanted to be kissed by a drunken, slobbering, greasy old man covered in sweat, with traces of vomit still on his shirt.

Ewww. It was just gross to watch. I wanted to shove him in a shower, and I wasn’t even convinced that would help. (The picture below makes him look a lot cleaner than he did in the film. Trust me. He was repulsive. I kept hoping he’d wash his hair at some point in the film.)

But she instantly falls in love with him. After that, the movie is predictable. He gets drunker. And drunker. And then drunker.

For two freakin’ hours he gets drunker.

Then, as we all knew he would, he loses her kid. Finally! She dumps him. He goes to rehab. He gets better. She doesn’t want him back. He rides off into the sunset alone.

Oh, yeah. He gets a good check for one of his songs. He graduates from a dilapidated old truck. Are we supposed to think money is a happy ending? Um, no. Not when you’re all alone and no one loves you in the whole world.

There was one bit of realism I liked: his adult son, who Bad didn’t talk to after he was four years old, is not interested in getting to know his father.

That is realistic and refreshing, since I’ve never seen that in fiction without the obligatory make-up and happy-ever-after in the father-son relationship. Um, no.

Yeah, great acting.

Joy, joy, joy.

I give it two thumbs down. I was in a perfectly happy mood going in, and by the one hour point I was looking at my watch every two minutes. By the time we left, I actually cried because it was such a depressing movie. And not a good sort of Greek-tragedy-cathartic cry, but an I’m-depressed-and-I-want-to-talk-to-my-best-friend cry.

So what movies have you seen lately? How’d you like them? And how do you feel about realism? And unhappy endings?